Bug#85544: upgrade fails immediately with "cannot configure a predepend"

[Chris Butler <chrisb@debian.org>]

Package: apt
Version: 0.3.19
Severity: grave

dselect-upgrade fails immediatly with:

[chrisb@downstairs:~] $ sudo apt-get -y dselect-upgrade
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  cslatex* csplain* libsnmp4.1* sl*
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  fortunes-bofh-excuses host libbind0 libexpat1 libgnomeui33 libid3-3.7-13
  libmng1 libsdl-image1.1 libsdl-mixer1.1 libsnmp-base libsnmp4.2 rblcheck
  xmms-synaesthesia
320 packages upgraded, 13 newly installed, 4 to remove and 3 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/125MB of archives. After unpacking 11.3MB will be used.
E: Internal Error, Couldn't configure a pre-depend

-- System Information
Debian Release: testing/unstable
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux downstairs 2.4.0 #1 SMP Mon Jan 15 20:29:43 GMT 2001 i686

Versions of packages apt depends on:
ii  libc6                        2.2.1-1     GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii  libstdc++2.10                1:2.95.2-14 The GNU stdc++ library